Savage Kitten and I are no longer an item. We no longer share a bed, we are no longer partners. And I feel that twenty wonderful years have been ripped away.
I cannot yet bear this loss, but there isn't anything I can do about it.
It was NOT my decision - that really doesn't matter, though.
For several months things were not as they once were. She recognized this fact far earlier than I did, and at the time it affected her much more. We have grown apart in some ways, there are now differences where once there was so very much we shared.
She is more realistic than I am. Sometimes I am not particularly clear-sighted.
In August she cut the Gordian knot. It took great courage to do so. She did not know how I would react, didn't want to cause me pain, and was afraid of what I might do.
Even that wounds me - towards people I love I cannot be violent in any way. I do not even want my words to hurt.
I reacted then as I always do when faced with something far out of the ordinary. Shock. Disbelief. Denial. Gibbering.
In retrospect there are more mature ways of reacting.
Most of this month has been an agonizing ongoing hollowness as the reality hits home. Terrifying. Reality is a bitch that bludgeons.
September has not been a good 'place', and at times I am an idiot.
I am bereft. Savage Kitten isn't handling it well either.
What makes it harder is that we are still living with each other. But that also makes it much easier, too. That apartment is our own place, and we are comfortable with the other person around. It is where both of us feel safe. We are at ease with each other's quirks and peculiarities and we enjoy living together.
We've giving each other space, and we have our own rooms.
We occasionally eat together or share coffee.
Of course we are still friends. How could it be otherwise? For more than twenty years Savage Kitten and I have been a couple - we are in so many ways part of each other's lives, part of each other's personalities.
Something that meant, and that still means, the world to me has come to an end. But she remains enormously precious to me.
There is a new beginning here. Things will never be the same, however this, too, will be good.
Home is still home.
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THIS POST ISN'T ABOUT WOMEN
There are several artists rolling over in their graves right now. One or two aren't dead yet, but never mind. Rolling. Among them Frank ...
8 comments:
I've been together with my wife 20 years. I know what 20 years feels like. Frankly, I have trouble recalling the time when I wasn't together with my wife.
You must be in a lot of pain... Do you have a support network in the area? Friends are critical at a time like this.
So sorry, BoTH. Hang in there.
also, Penelope Trunk's most recent post is sort of relevant, in offering advice on how to recover from ridiculously bad situations. And a good laugh.
There are drugs, a donkey, and an outstanding arrest warrant. Good times.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2010/09/24/how-to-do-damage-control/
Tayere E-Kvetcher,
A number of friends, yes. Don’t want to lay the heavy on them. At times like these I tend to clam up. Bitterness, once digested, is … “tonifying”. Or some such crap. Rigid leash on maudling, melancholy, moroseness.
Point is that when I’m vulnerable, the defenses kick in. All that hooie about a stiff-upper lip is just a British way of saying it’s hard to control your emotions once you let them out of the bag. No one really likes little free-range emotions running wild all over the place.
So, alcohol intake about 10% above normal, food about 20% less. Obsessively writing weird things in Dutch in a little notebook. Numbered lists, statistical analyses, and percentages. Plus text, commentary, and annotation. Pretty much inventing a mathematical and symbol-language for the emotions.
No one really likes little free-range emotions running wild all over the place.
Kinda makes me think that someone should call pest-control - "there's slimy things underfoot pooping on the carpet, make them go away!".
"Oh wait. Alcohol kills 'em. Never mind."
Work, however, is both sanctuary and salutory distraction.
Tzipporah,
That’s a great blogpost. I’ll have to explore the rest of that blog.
Somebody already offered to help me get narcotics. I passed on the offer, as I am firm believer in caffeine, nicotine, highly refined white sugar, and the occasional nip of hooch. If none of those work, long walks really change the body chemistry.
The ‘getting help’ part is hard (see explanation in response to e-Kvetcher above). Besides, I live in California – all these sensitive individuals getting in touch with their feelings make me barf, so heck will freeze over before I act like them.
The "getting help" part is as hard or as easy as you make it. It's damn near impossible for me, what with my adult-child-of-alcoholics, New England stiff upper lip thing. But sometimes it's the only thing you can do to make things better.
One thing I have learned, over the years - any emotion or thought you ignore is just going to keep coming back over and over in bigger and bigger ways until you deal with it.
God help us all if it gets to the point where the monkey is dominant voice in the apartment...
The "getting help" part is as hard or as easy as you make it. It's damn near impossible for me, what with my adult-child-of-alcoholics, New England stiff upper lip thing. But sometimes it's the only thing you can do to make things better.
Unfortunately I've got that stiff upper lip thing in sheer bucket loads. Probably the result of being treated like a leper by my classmates and neighbors in Valkenswaard because we were Americans (and thus responsible for all the ills in the world, particularly the suffering of repressed people everywhere, and most especially Vietnam - remember, it was always the Canadians who had liberated the Netherlands, so no brownie points there), neither Catholic nor good Calvinist (Anglican? Oh, so you admit that Yanks are inferior in everyway to even the English - never mind that it was a mildly held and rather off-kilter interpretation of Anglican - nominal but not lived), multi-lingual (damn you faking foreign deviants! Only the Dutch are really multi-lingual!), and lastly, as damn close to leprosy as you can get among the ignorant Dutch villagers of the hinterlands in the sixties and seventies, my mother was dying of cancer (the plague, the plague, contagion, run awaaayyyyy!).
Not exactly an atmosphere conducive to sharing one's feelings, seeking the support of one's nearest and dearest (also lepers - they've got more than enough to deal with), expressing frustration (you DESERVE to suffer, you hell-bound heretic!), or even seeking out hugs. If a hug came my way right now, damned if I'd know what to do with it.
One thing I have learned, over the years - any emotion or thought you ignore is just going to keep coming back over and over in bigger and bigger ways until you deal with it.
I'm talking to myself a lot. In several languages. Mostly Dutch. Sometimes Tamarao, occasionally Hokkien - so far away from anyone's hometown dialect here that, were I audible, there is NO danger that she would ever understand (can I REALLY tell her that I still lust, passionately and painfully, after the hot young bod I've held so close and so fondly for two decades, OR that even feeling that way is painful and frustrating and now makes me feel uncomfortable with myself?).
The good thing is that my notebook is helping me answer my ranting. I'm talking back, I've regained my voice, even if at the moment it is gibbering polyglottishly. At least it makes sense to me.
God help us all if it gets to the point where the monkey is dominant voice in the apartment...
Not a chance. There's also the head-sheep, the pretty little she-sheep, the froad, the various frog-like creatures, the Germanophile raccoon, several dysfunctional bears, a handpuppet spider (boyfriend of the pretty little she-sheep), the grinning purple cat (Beanie), ms. Bruin (head-roomie), and a few others. Between them they don't let anyone have the last word - I'm living in a madhouse.
Tough stupid stubborn pride. Yeah, dysfunctional. But it fits me like a glove.
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